The concept of releasable fasteners for tire chains is disclosed in commonly owned U.S. Pat. No. 6,591,882, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference. The concept of the releasable fastener used in that patent was to enable the removal and replacement of a cross member that had become worn or damaged. Thus, when a tire chain broke, it was almost invariably a broken cross member. By securing the cross members to the side members using releasable connectors or fasteners, an operator merely has to actuate the release mechanism, remove the broken cross member, and replace that cross member with a spare cross member.
The above basic concept has been expanded to establish a new and different dimension of tire chain structure.